1. Field
A clothes treating apparatus, and more particularly, a clothes treating apparatus having a heat pump cycle for drying clothes is disclosed herein.
2. Background
Generally, clothes dryer having a drying function, such as a washing machine or a dryer, is an apparatus that dries laundry by evaporating moisture contained in the laundry, by blowing a hot blast generated by a heater into a drum. The clothes dryer may be classified into an exhausting type clothes dryer or a condensing type clothes dryer according to a processing method of humid air having passed through a drum after drying laundry.
In the exhausting type clothes dryer, humid air having passed through a drum is exhausted outside of the clothes dryer. On the other hand, in the condensing type clothes dryer, humid air having passed through a drum is circulated without being exhausted outside of the clothes dryer. Then, the humid air is cooled to a temperature less than a dew-point temperature by a condenser, so moisture included in the humid air is condensed.
In the condensing type clothes dryer, condensate water condensed by a condenser is heated by a heater, and then heated air is introduced into a drum. While humid air is cooled to be condensed, thermal energy of the air is lost. In order to heat the air to a temperature high enough to dry laundry, an additional heater is required.
In the exhausting type clothes dryer, air of high temperature and high humidity should be exhausted outside of the clothes dryer, and external air at room temperature should be introduced to be heated to a required temperature by a heater. As drying processes are executed, air discharged from an outlet of the drum has low humidity. This air is not used to dry laundry, but rather, is exhausted outside of the clothes dryer. As a result, a heat quantity of the air is lost. This may degrade thermal efficiency.
Recently, a clothes dryer having a heat pump cycle, capable of enhancing energy efficiency by collecting energy discharged from a drum and by heating air introduced into the drum using the energy, has been developed. Such a condensing type clothes dryer may include a drum, into which laundry may be introduced, a circulation duct that provides a passage such that air circulates via the drum, a circulation fan configured to move circulating air along the circulation duct, and a heat pump cycle having an evaporator and a condenser serially installed along the circulation duct, such that air circulating along the circulation duct passes through the evaporator and the condenser. The heat pump cycle may include a circulation pipe, which forms the circulation passage, such that a refrigerant circulates via the evaporator and the condense, and a compressor and an expansion valve installed along the circulation pipe between the evaporator and the condenser.
In the heat pump cycle, thermal energy of air having passed through the drum may be transferred to a refrigerant via the evaporator, and then the thermal energy of the refrigerant may be transferred to air introduced into the drum via the condenser. With such a configuration, a hot blast may be generated using thermal energy discarded by the conventional exhausting type clothes dryer or lost in the conventional condensing type clothes dryer. In this case, a heater for heating air heated while passing through the condenser may be additionally included. The clothes dryer using the heat pump cycle may have a more effective dehumidifying function via a drying method using a heat pump cycle, rather than by the conventional method, due to its high energy efficiency.